Hello Mo fans!
Mo and Nims are doing well, they have slimmed down a bit. Miss Nimbus got outside one day when I was mowing the lawn. I saw her doing her business over by the brush pile, digging a little hole and burying the results. Here comes Mo to inspect her work, he scrapes a bit more dirt on top to help out. I had to stop and watch this and laugh. He sometimes does additional work in the indoor litter box as well.
Miss Nims has found a way to climb up on the wicker shelves in the kitchen. She loved climbing up here in the last kitchen we lived in, and has trained me to come over and pet her when she is up there.
the highrise petting station
She climbs up, flops on her side, gives me the look, the one that says “Here I am, come and pet me!” I come tickle her feet through the wicker and pet her, releasing clouds of white cat hair that shower down over the contents of the shelves. Life is messy!
Spring is in full bloom here; cherry trees, wallflowers, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and trillium.
trillium
Soon it will be warm enough to try making some glass beads. The Glass Art Society will be holding a conference here in Seattle in early June.
This week we have one older bracelet and a new pair of earrings.
Something old, something new
The bracelet is an Aura Sun Arts original from some years back; it features glass seed beads, freshwater pearls, and larger glass, quartz and amethyst beads dangling in a cascade across the top that move as the wearer does.
The earrings are my handmade glass beads with metallic accent beads, and the raindrop beads that are also shown loose. Click on either image for a closer view.
Something old and something new, and a salute to the upcoming Royal Wedding that is filling the news. Here my teacup had foam that took the shape of a portrait of Kate Middleton! I won’t be auctioning it off like the jelly bean story on the BBC.
teacup Kate with fancy hat
On a more serious note, this event will have an audience in the millions.
Princess Diana’s funeral had an estimated viewership of 33 million, and if half of them recited the Lord’s Prayer when it was spoken during that service, that (due to the technology of the global simulcast) was the largest unison prayer in the history of our planet. Maybe that prayer will be a part of the wedding service? Wishing the couple every happiness and a day of global harmony.
It has been a long winter, and a few of the cats around here are getting a little plump. Mo is getting positively portly! At 12 pounds, for his small frame, he is a couple pounds overweight, which for a human would be the equivalent of 20 pounds.
happy cats hanging out
Of course it is their owner who has been too willing to comply with their requests for more food who is to blame. Mr Mo specializes in the ankle dance; Miss Nimbus is the one who is very loud and vocal. But when she also stands up on her hind feet and waves a front paw in the air, alas the cuteness is too hard to resist.
I saw a story on Sunday Morning about people who walk their cats like dogs. Could this be the way to encourage Mo to lose a little weight, and a way to have Miss Nimbus be outdoors without hunting birds?
One cat was shown wearing a cloth harness called the Kitty Holster, this looks much harder to wriggle out of, it makes me wonder if they come in white? Time to go feed said cats.
Carved wooden lion bead, with wooden knot bead at neck
This week we have a special carved boxwood bead in the form of a guardian lion, sometimes also called a Fu Dog.
It has a sweet face with beady black eyes and an open mouth, looking up at the wearer. The back of the bead has the signature of the artist. It was purchased some years back at a fine bead shop called Hands of the Hills on Mercer Island, WA, that has unfortunately since become wholesale only.
Another carved wooden bead sits at the back of the neck. Click on the image for a closer view. The necklace stringing is a subtle gradient of browns; incorporating seed beads with a sprinkling of larger beads. It is 24 inches long with a three inch tassel.
This one is promised to a good home but a similar piece would run $125.00.
Big handsome gray cat
This giant gray cat stops by from time to time, another regular in the neighborhood. He is as big as a raccoon, and the same color, so it would be quite hard to tell them apart in the dark.
My cats like to watch the action from the window, and I call them over if I spot a cat or squirrel they would like to see. No deer in the backyard here, but moles and raccoons are around, and the odd possum.
It is possible that this visitor is a Maine Coon cat, the oldest native cat breed in America. Wikipedia has a nice article about the history and origins of the breed. I will have to observe closely to see if those big paws have the polydactyl extra toes the breed sometimes exhibits.
Seafoam blues with hints of green
The Vernal Equinox arrives, and today’s creation features three Aura Sun Arts beads strung with a range of blues and hints of green.
The handmade beads feature my favorite blue and gold glimmers, and tiny air bubbles encased in clear glass. I add the air bubbles by making a mesh of glass strings and encasing over that. Many glass artists view air bubbles as mistakes, but I find them to be really fun. When you spin the bead the bubbles look like tiny planets in orbit.
Click on the photo for a closer look. This one is 24 inches and needs no clasp. It has already gone to a good home, but a similar creation might cost $95.00.
Hello Mo fans!
Well our visiting cat friend Sawdust gets the spotlight this week. He is the orange and white cat with the sweet face who has been hanging around from time to time. When the weather took a real cold turn a few weeks back Mr Sawdust became a very regular visitor, stopping by the back porch every morning, sitting on the windowsills, meowing to come in.
When I went outside he would rub up against my ankles and seemed so determined to come in that I became worried and fed him a small bit out on the porch some mornings. There were a couple families that had moved recently, had he been abandoned? I finally decided to try a test message and put a red collar on Sawdust with a short message: HUNGRY: am I a stray?
Oh giggles, he shows up a few days later with a pretty black collar and name tag: Jasper!
Mr Jasper stops by for a visit
Jasper is a type of semi-precious rock that comes in a variety of browns, quite the appropriate name for him. The name tag also had a phone number on the back, and a call to Jasper’s family was fun. Apparently Jasper goes visiting to quite a few neighbor’s houses, and he is just over the back fence from me so we are happy he is not crossing any roads.
My cats are quite relieved to not have this intruder be homeless. Miss Nimbus has had her run-ins with Jasper, it was he who had her trapped up on the shed roof. Now when she sees him sitting on the windowsill she jumps up on the inside of the window and smacks the glass with her paws to scare him away. Cats can be very jealous defending their human from other cats!
I sneak outside and give him the chin scratch anyway, he’s such a nice fellow.
fire bead in peyote stitch woven choker
Finally finished another woven seed bead choker this week.
I call this series Fire beads because of how great they look in full sunlight – like they are on fire! Translucent ambers and blues with glimmers of gold and lots of encased air bubbles make this handmade Aura Sun Arts bead special.
The focal bead colors are repeated in the seed beads along the necklace, in shades of amber and brown, with flecks of gold and a scattering of blues. The bead weaving technique, using upholstery thread and a tiny needle, is called the peyote stitch. With it you can create patterns or completely freeform pieces, it is much like knitting.
Browns and blues just naturally complement each other, it’s a good team. Here is another shot to show the detail on the end clasp. Some of the beads were just 1mm in size, it made this one more challenging. It is 15.5 inches long. $250.00. Click on each photo for an enlarged view.
fire bead with bubbles
Tags: amber, AuraSunArts, beads, blue, encasing, glass, necklace, peyote, seed, stitch, weaving
AuraSunArts, seed beads | mary | 
February 12, 2011 5:25 pm | 
Comments (1)
Nims with golden streamers on her collar
Our pretty Miss Nimbus is in the doghouse for killing birds. To help protect the birds we have added gold streamers alongside the bells on her collar. To be extra careful, she is now only allowed outdoors at night. Catch all the rats you want, honey.
She spent a night in jail, the doghouse, (literally a large dog pet carrier), after bringing in the bird’s body.
Seattle is having a mild winter compared to many parts of the country. The varied thrush only visits at this time of year; it’s a rare bird that looks a little like a robin but with a big black V on it’s chest. Learn more about birds at the Audubon Society and get hooked by joining your local chapter. Unfortunately, even well-fed cats kill a very large number of songbirds, with more solitary species being more vulnerable. Here is an article from the American Bird Conservancy.
The fishpond in the yard is a water supply for birds and my bird list for recent visitors is pretty impressive. The nuthatches have been absent this year, sad to say.
Bird list: Chickadees (Black Capped and Chestnut Backed), Cooper’s Hawk, Crows, Juncos, Purple Finches, House Sparrows, Rufous Sided Towhee, Varied Thrush, Robin, Flicker, Ruby Crowned Kinglets, Steller’s Jay, Pine Warblers, and a glimpse of a wren.
black and white necklace with earrings
Black and white beads set each other off; the white ones twinkling like the stars in the winter sky. Here I have the necklace I created a few weeks back with new matching earrings. I added a third row of beads on the necklace as well. Looping and branching as you work is a nice change from beads strung in single file. Click on the photo for a close up view.
There are three handmade Aura Sun Arts beads in the set, the large black and white beads. They have traces of goldstone and bluestone glitter jazzing them up.
Speaking of the night sky, Venus makes an appearance in the early morning hours. Check with Astronomy Magazine for the best viewing in your locale.
Subscribe